The SDFLA Blog is dedicated to providing news and notes regarding federal practice in the Southern District of Florida. The New Times calls the blog "the definitive source on South Florida's federal court system." All tips on court happenings are welcome and will remain anonymous. Please email David Markus at dmarkus@markuslaw.com

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

News & Notes

I wish I had a little more District news for everyone, but it's fairly quiet in the SDFLA. But here's what's up:

1. Here's a very interesting article from Slate about the two times people snuck cameras into the Supreme Court. Can you imagine if that happened now? Here's one of the pictures from 1937. Really neat.

2. Lots of coverage of the houseboat argument from the High Court. Here's SCOTUSBlog:

It used to be said that the way to identify whether a stream was
navigable was whether a log would float in it. Seems a bit
old-fashioned. Perhaps it now could be said that the way to know
whether a floating structure is or is not a “vessel” is to ask whether,
if it were a styrofoam sofa, would it float? Seems a bit silly, but
that is sometimes the way it goes when the Supreme Court Justices try to
outdo each other in imagining homely illustrations in order to make
legal points. It was Justice Stephen G. Breyer (usually to be counted
upon to go from the ridiculous to the sublime with homely examples) who
wondered on Monday about that lightweight sofa bobbing on the surface,
perhaps with a retiree sitting back and enjoying being carried along.
At least it was funnier than Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.,
wondering if an inner tube is a boat.
Breyer and the Chief Justice were reacting to Washington lawyer David C. Frederick, who had urged the Court in Lozman v. Riviera Beach
to rule that a floating structure is a “vessel” in a legal sense “if it
floats, moves, and carries people or things on water.” Frederick was
going for the purest of simplicity as the Court tried to untangle the
case of a Florida floating home that wound up in a maritime court on the
theory that it was a “vessel,” legally speaking — even though the only
way it could move was to be towed, like a garbage scow. (A garbage scow
did not actually get into the oral argument, but Justice Anthony M.
Kennedy made it clear, with abundant sarcasm, that this lowly structure
was far from a mansion: said he, it was “a magnificent structure” that
had been “mercifully destroyed.”)
The definition of a “vessel,” for purposes of maritime law is,
indeed, a very big deal for the maritime industry, for the Coast Guard,
and for lawyers who practice in the arcane field of admiralty law.
While the Justices were having boatloads of fun with the Lozman
case, they knew that the outcome of it will shape maritime commerce in a
very important way. Because the Court’s precedents on the point seem
to meander like so many leaves on a brook, it would be quite important
if the Court could say — once and for all — what the word “vessel”
means. That’s why the Court reached out and took the case of the
eccentric South Florida millionaire, Fane Lozman, and his floating home —
of which, it was said Monday, there was not another like it in all of
Florida.

Professors Epstein and Martin have also brought up to date their annual analysis
of the justices’ ideologies—their relative conservatism or liberalism
based on their voting records. The news is that Justice Samuel Alito Jr.
moved even farther to the right.
It’s no surprise that the
upcoming presidential election could be very significant for the court.
But Epstein-Martin’s ideology analysis allows us to measure how
different it would likely be if Mitt Romney gets to replace Ruth Bader
Ginsburg compared with President Obama replacing Antonin Scalia or
Anthony Kennedy. A Roberts-Alito-like replacement for Justice Ginsburg
would move the court dramatically to the right. But a
Kagan-Sotomayor-like replacement for Justice Scalia or Justice Kennedy
would move the court to the moderate left, with the center somewhere
around Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer.
As
this term begins, however, the line-up’s the same as last year, and
there’s every reason to expect the court to continue along its
conservative path.

The Southern District of Florida blog was started by David Oscar Markus, who is a criminal trial and appellate lawyer in Miami, Florida. He frequently practices in federal courts around the country, including his hometown, the Southern District of Florida and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a former law clerk to then-Chief Judge of the District, Edward B. Davis.